A federal judge has ruled that the State Department cannot use President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban to deny visas to foreigners who apply for them.
The decision issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan applies only to 82 would-be immigrants and comes with a major caveat: It still allows immigration authorities to deny the foreign citizens entry to the U.S. by turning them away at a port of entry or instructing airline officials to refuse them boarding.
Sooknanan, a Biden appointee based in Washington, ruled that the federal law Trump invoked in June to limit entry to the U.S. by citizens of 19 countries does not give the State Department the power to deny visas.
Lawyers for the Trump administration asked Sooknanan to accept the “longstanding practice” of the State Department to refuse visas to people whose entry would be blocked by a presidential order.
But the judge, citing a Supreme Court decision last year that limited the power of agencies to rely on their own interpretations of the law, said the State Department’s historical tradition wasn’t entitled to deference.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed in July on behalf of people from Afghanistan, Burma, Togo, Somalia and Iran who won the right to apply for visas under the so-called diversity visa program. The immigration lawyer who filed the case, Curtis Morrison, said he viewed the ruling as a mixed bag even though it doesn’t give his clients an immediate way to enter the U.S.
Morrison noted that the ban Trump issued in June, a reboot of similar policies he issued during his first term, promises that the latest policy will be reviewed by September. “There is a possibility that the ban goes away some day,” the attorney said.
Sooknanan said that due to legal precedents she was powerless to grant relief to visa applicants whose applications were denied outright by consular officials in response to Trump’s ban. The ruling extends only to those who were told their applications were on hold due to Trump’s directive.
Spokespeople for the State Department and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last month, a federal judge in Seattle ruled that Trump’s latest travel ban could not be used to block refugees entitled to enter the U.S. as a result of previous orders in litigation challenging Trump’s suspension of refugee admissions. However, a federal appeals court put that ruling on hold a few days later.
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